CSI’s sexiest vegetarian on snatching (fake) bodies, carrying a torch for Grissom and the show’s all-star band.

During her six years as a Las Vegas CSI, your character Sara Sidle’s life has been anything but idle. Was it tough becoming a walking tabloid? A couple seasons back, she was almost blown up. She got a DUI. Her boyfriend dumped her. Grissom [William Petersen] sort of dumped her. She had authority issues and I was wondering if she was always going to have them. I felt like an emotional punching bag.

So is she going to get knocked around more anytime soon? This week, she helpes out when a burned body shows up in a chimney, but her personal dramas seem to have cooled. Going into this season, I wanted her to lighten up a little bit. So far, so good. It’s the first season in a while where I’m able to smile and wink.

Weren’t Sara and Grissom supposed to have had something to smile about earlier this season? Episode 5 had us in a hotel room in bed together. It was really surprising. But that episode evolved into one with Nick [George Eads] solving a big case [because Petersen was unavailable when it filmed].

Do you think you’ll ever get back to that scene? The Grissom and Sara story line is not over. It will get revisited. I’m inclined to think it will be this year. Because I’m a romantic at heart, I’d like to see somethign. From time to time, I get asked by fans when Sara and Grissom are going to do it.

What else do you hear from the fans? People offer up story ideas all the time. Sometimes they can give me the creeps. When a stranger comes up and talks to you about a murder, you’re like, “OK. Thanks.”

The episodes are pretty creepy already. Do you ever get queasy around all the dead bodies? I think the special-effects guys are trying to gross me out. It’s a game for them. One of the grossest episodes was this season when Greg [Eric Szmanda] and Sara found liquified bodies in a car and he got gobs of one of them on his face. I had to leave the room. There was another one a couple years ago where a guy gets hit by a car, impaled and left in a garage for two or three days. That’s the one where I came closest to losing my dinner.

No wonder you and Sara are both vegetarians. I’ve been one for a long time. Right around Season 2, we had a story line where Grissom and Sara watch a pig decompose. I had said we should definitely use a fake pig, not a real one. And I made sure that Sara became a vegetarian.

Are there any pluses to working on a show with lots of corpses? We have attempted to steal the fake bodies for the carpool lane. Do I have a carpool-lake fake friend? I don’t. I won’t say who, but someone who was late for a particular event took one. We don’t encourange this sort of behavior. I want to be on the record with that.

What do you do when you’re not working on the show? I’ve had a theater company for seven or eight years. A group of us produced a musical last year. It’s called “Dear Bernard,” [and it’s] about a woman from a small town in England who moves to American to try and make it as a star. We’re taking the show to London in June.

Will you be in it? I wish I had the talent to do musical theater. I’d put together a band and go on the road. We do have a lunchtime jam band on the CSI set, though. Lots of crew people are in it. Gary Dourdan [Warrick] plays a mean guitar and bass. Robert David Hall [Dr. Robbins] plays guitar. Marg Helgenberger [Catherine] plays piano.

Is any of this jamming going to show up on CSI? I have been pushing an all-musical CSI episode for five years. Grissom is in the lab and some chemical affects him badly and so this whole thing takes place in his head. While he’s delirious, the show becomes a musical. Everybody would have to sing. Quite probably it would be the last episode ever.